February 1511:30 a.m.

He wore a red and brown ski mask. He wore the yellow
jacket to a 1970s sweat suit, filthy. He wore a pair of dirty
blue jeans. He wore soiled gloves. His English was almost
unintelligible, unintelligible for his accent. He stood above
me.

"Do you speak English," he queried through his slight
intelligibility.

I sat on steps of volcanic stone. I sat on steps in
front of the very large municipal building of Mexico City's
Zócalo. It was morning. Across the Zócalo from me rose the
Cathedral of Mexico. I was trying to scribble some notes on
the Cathedral of Mexico at morning. I was not succeeding in
my description of the Cathedral of Mexico at morning. I did
not want to be interrupted.

But, "Do you speak English," he queried through his
slight intelligibility. He stood above me.

"Yes," I barked. My patience was short because my
scribbling was going badly. I thought if I actually spoke to
him in English he might desist. I was wrong. Something
unintelligible then garbled from him, something about money.

I shook my waspish head. I dismissed him. I said to
him "no" sharply. I tried frustratedly, intently, to
continue then with my scribbling, to continue scribbling my
notes that were not succeeding.

The garbling persisted.

"I'm working," I spat then in English. A fine edge of
annoyance cut the words. I was not succeeding. This man was
making it worse.

"Sí," he spat back. Then something more he said about
money. Something about money. He would interrupt me, I
prevised, until I paid him to go away.

"Estoy trabajando," I said to him in Spanish now, but
sharply again, with flaring desperation. "I am trying to take
some notes over this plaza." But I'm failing, I thought. And
you're at fault.

Relentless though, he was. He became now belligerent.
He nodded an uncompromising nod. He gestured impatient
circles with his filthy glove, fanning away my words of
inconsequence.

"Give me some money," he demanded in Spanish through his
ski mask.

"I'm not going to give you nothing."

"You're not going to give me nothing?"

"No, I'm trying to work. Leave me alone, señor."

"And what if I told you I was a terrorist?"

My irritation became anger.

"I am a terrorist," he claimed. "And what would happen
if I told you I was going to kill you?"

My anger became fury: "You are not going to kill me,
señor!"

"Look!" he said. And this was a command. He bent down
toward me. He thrust his gloved hand right before my face.
It was a threat: Money, or violence.

I stood. I looked him dead in the eyes. I restrained my
instinct to strike him. I stalked away, away from the steps
upon which I had been sitting, upon which he still stood. I
crossed the street onto the Zócalo proper. There a lamppost,
I found. I squatted and leaned against that lamppost. I
returned to my scribbling attempts, to my failing interrupted
scribbling attempts. My fury burned. The wrong encounter
for the wrong mood. If my scribbling had been going well the
scene would not have turned toward conflict. If my
scribbling had been going well the scene would not have
turned toward violence. It was the failed scribblings, my
frustration that sought the conflict, the violence.

The man in the ski mask crossed away from the Zócalo.
He loped onto a side-street. He seemed to have come only to
mock my imaginings of yesterday. But still this was not an
assault. The man had no weapon. I never believed his
threats. There was no palpable danger.

To stand in the center of the Zócalo is to stand on the
moon. A flat open space in a smaller city, or in rural Mexico
would not create this sensation. But such a wide flat open
space among the cramped ever-hoverings of this megalopolis
does. It is the juxtaposition. To step into the Zócalo is to
step from beneath overshadowing buildings, out of the
thronging jostlings of the passerby, away from the onslaught
of traffic. You stride across a vast field of meter-square
ash-gray stones and you feel you have escaped to some other
more naked place. No trees stand near, no benches, no vender
stalls. And the light is strangely complete--for there are
no shadows to be cast. And the sun's position is dominant
and clear--for it is not obstructed from view. Even the
inescapable auto sounds that surround the great plaza are
transmuted by its breadth into a mere rush of wind.

Today in the Zócalo makeshift tents were scattered
about. Fifteen of them or so. They were of blankets or of
plastic tarpaulins raised by aluminum poles and tied to
stakes driven into the mortar between the flagstones. People
reclined on straw mats or on cardboard beneath these tents,
under blankets. But they were not squatters. Squatters are
not tolerated in the Zócalo. Demonstrators, they were. And
these are tolerated. They converge on the Zócalo, these
demonstrators, from all across the country almost every day
of the year in the name of whatever cause you might imagine.
The Zócalo has been the political nexus of this country since
the empire of the Aztecs. And Mexicans know that for their
complaints to be heard they have to come here, en masse, and
make their complaints heard. Even so their complaints are not
always heard. Leaflets today described worker's rights or
something. They were pinned to the tents. I did not look at
them very carefully. But I did smell a woman's tamales
cooking as I passed by one tent. The tamales steamed before
a queue of men. They sweetened the stale city air.

The Zócalo is not just for demonstrators. Every year in
September thousands of Mexicans gather there for independence
celebrations. Thousands, too, will assemble to watch big
screen broadcasts of the Mexican national soccer team during
World Cup play; or mass for presidential or gubernatorial
campaign speeches. It is not uncommon for the attendance at
these events to number over two hundred thousand. It's an
immense plaza. The crowds that come to fill it are just as
immense. It is a very Mexican site.

Then, of course, the tourists. Today the Zócalo swarmed
with the buzzing of French and German and English speakers.
This must be the European travel season because I've never
seen so many of them. They paid little heed to the
demonstrators. They were more drawn by the guy who does the
Aztec dancing over in front of the Templo Mayor, and to the
murals of the National Palace, and to the architecture of the
Cathedral. I was going to scribble some notes on the
Cathedral interior myself but was crowded out of the
building. Impossible to find an observation point.
Impossible to concentrate. It was a flood of foreigners
today, I a part of it. I will try to return tonight for some
interior notes on the Cathedral. I did note the mildewy rose
color of the Cathedral's exterior though, and its towers and
gothic face. It would seem to me rather a grotesque edifice,
I think, were it not for its antiquity and sheer scale. And
I like how the monumental rectangles of its shape are
softened at their extremities by cupolas and domes. A nice
smooth geometry there, daggered by crosses. And that
ambience of sanctuary. And those bells chiming tinny and
deep.

I found a theater nearby showing Romeo and Juliet. A
poster outside says the movie is dubbed in Spanish. I think
I might enjoy the movie better dubbed in Spanish than with
Spanish subtitles. How does one translate Shakespeare into
Spanish and then abbreviate him into subtitles? Sounds
egregious. I know the story well enough that I might be able
to follow it in Spanish anyway.

I finally finished Henry IV part 1. Not until the end
did I really have a sense of its theme. I like its theme. I
like it so much that I'm going to read the play again.
Things are not always what they seem. I am challenged by
that idea. It is an ongoing issue for me. I seek to see how
things are instead of how they seem. When I go to scribble
my notes I look for what the Zócalo is, not what the Zócalo
seems to be. When a man approaches me begging, and then
threatens me, I try to describe him as he was, not as he
seemed. But what does this mean? How is something not what
it seems? I mean, the Zócalo is a quarter-kilometer square of
volcanic flagstone. The Cathedral sits on one side of it.
The National Palace and Templo Mayor sit on another. The
Federal District Department sits on a third. And some
nameless hotel on the fourth. Yes, this is the Zócalo. This
is how it seems. But is that all the Zócalo is? Even from
my brief description above I think it's clear that there is
more to the Zócalo than this admittedly impressive
architectonic appearance. There is the constant coming and
going of unhappy demonstrators. There is the constant coming
and going of happy tourists. There is the blood that was
shed as human sacrifice when the Aztecs ruled over it. There
is the blood that is sipped every night as a sacrament in the
Cathedral. Humans worship in that Cathedral. Humans execute
politics in that National Palace. Humans get drunk in the
hotel bar. Humans fight during the soccer games. Humans
shout during the gritos of independence. Young lovers lean
against the lampposts. And all of them come and go through,
move around, and are part of the spirit of the Zócalo. But
this spirit is invisible. It is not there. And yet, the
spirit is there. The Zócalo is what happens in the Zócalo, I
think, what the Zócalo means, not how the Zócalo looks.

So...intangible. Impossibly intangible. There is
something to every place, to every thing that is beyond what
it seems to be. And it is this something beyond that makes it
what it is. The appearance is a deception. The essence
behind that appearance is a truth. And yet the appearance is
our avenue to the essence. The deception leads us to the
truth. How does one manage this paradox? How does one get
at this truth through this deception? I go looking for it all
of the time, this truth, everyday, and I can say I don't
know. Everyday I look at something, I sit down near the
Zócalo, for example, and I tell myself that what I am looking
for is beyond this Zócalo, within this Zócalo and that only
through great insight can I get at this something beyond,
within. But...I do not know what this something is. So I
simply begin where I can. I begin with the deception. I
begin with a description of the appearance of the Cathedral,
of the National Palace, of the architecture that makes up the
Zócalo, and sometimes, after a period of scribbling, after a
listening to all of my senses, the sounds, the smells, the
light and the feel of the air and atmosphere I can pierce
through the appearance into something more real, an essence
of what is there, a meaning, the meaning of the place, the
meaning that lies behind the form. A rare occurrence, this
is. A rare thing. This has to be part of what the greats
did. This seeing the essence. This elucidating the truth.
This stripping a thing of what it seems to be and showing a
thing for what it is. Yes, this has to be part of it. They
let us look through their eyes, maybe, and hear through their
ears, and interpret through their thoughts the essence that
lies behind the appearance, the truth behind the deception.
Art that lasts strips a thing of what it seems to be. Art
that lasts shows a thing as it is, for all eternity, bares it
for us, frees it of its seeming.

But how does one begin? I've been thinking that maybe
one simply begins with oneself. How much of how I perceive
myself is appearance, and how much is essence? How much of
what I know of myself is deception, and how much truth? It
makes sense to begin there, I guess. But even that is
intimidating. The appearance of the beggar was filthy from
head to foot, you know. But the essence of that beggar was
not filthy, I do not think. That beggar claimed to be a
terrorist. He claimed that he would kill me. But I looked
at him and I knew it was not truth. His threat, that gesture
of give me your money or suffer my violence was appearance,
was deception, not truth. I saw this. I just moved away.
And so did he. Both of us acceded to the truth, abandoned
the deception. How much of my self concept is just this
outer filth that I cannot see beyond? How much of what I
believe is me is really me being a beggar pretending to be a
terrorist? Maybe this is why I have such difficulty calling
myself a writer. I am not even a writer, I don't think. The
writer is the appearance, not the essence. It is the
deception, not the truth. It is the form, not the meaning.
If I am to begin here, with this, with myself, I have to
begin with what I am, not with what I call myself. I am not a
"writer." I am not even my name. I am just what I am.
So...anyway...Henry the IV, Part 1. I am re-reading it.